We are going to be loading a lot more data (e.g. from the British Library and Cambridge University Library) into project very soon, and we also planning to update the calculation code in the light of continued work on the public domain calculators — so watch this space!

To make sure we haven’t missed anyone, we can cross-reference this with bigger lists of notable people (not just creators) who died in 1940, such as one can find on Wikipedia:

A couple of years ago a program came out called “Public Domain Riches”. It teaches how to find, re-package, and sale Public Domain content. I was wondering what you thought about people making money off of others works?

I think the original authors have had long enough to profit off their works by the time copyright expires. At some point we have to acknowledge the good of society as a whole over the profit of an entity.

Once things enter the public domain, people will be all over them creating ebooks, kindle books, websites, you name it. Adding to information overload but in many cases also bringing very worthwhile things to public notice. I do favor the electronic uses as there is far too much paper ending up in landfills.